April 3, 2023 at 8:18 a.m.
Team Review: RHS girls' basketball
Lady Hodags competitive in a rebuilding year
Team Review: RHS girls' basketball
The Hodags had only two players back who had played appreciable varsity minutes the prior season. That fact, coupled with relatively low numbers to begin with, meant the team was likely to take its lumps during the course of the season.
That was evident right away in a 40-point loss in the team's season opener against Crandon. Yet, following that game, the Hodags showed some life pushing Rice Lake - a quality outfit from the Big Rivers Conference - to overtime.
Overall, the Hodags turned in a solid season in a Great Northern Conference that, aside from state qualifier Lakeland, was full of question marks. Rhinelander went 11-15 on the season, tied for third in the GNC with a 7-5 league mark and finished the season playing some of its best basketball.
The end result was another 10-plus win season for coach Ryan Clark, who has had nine of them in 10 seasons at the helm of the Hodags.
Rhinelander ended the year by putting top-seeded New London on the ropes in the WIAA tournament, trailing by three with only six minutes to play before losing by 13.
"I knew we were going to be inexperienced but, like Clark always says, we still expect to win and I expected to win," Ava Lamers, the team's lone senior, said after the New London loss. "We lost some close battles we should have won but we talked about in the locker room about how we finished the season hard. We got to the point we needed to be at, even with the struggles."
Here are five key storylines from the season.
Ava (to the) max
Much of the Hodags' success can be traced to Lamers' ability to ascend into the role of the team's leading scorer.
She served notice of how she could take over the game when she dropped a school-record 42 points on Rice Lake back in November. Even as defenses turned more and more attention to Lamers, her production didn't waver. She averaged 23.5 points per game, setting a program single-season scoring record with 611 points. She was also tops on the team averaging 6.6 rebounds per game and her 100 assists were the second most in school history - behind only teammate Morgan Van Zile, who had 107 this season.
"To be our best player, your struggle was at times you had to lead our team, take over and look to score," Clark said of Lamers last month during the team's season-ending banquet. "Other times you had to be a facilitator and find ways to play within the framework of the team. That sounds so easy, but that's extremely difficult. That's a fine line. You have to be extremely talented to have that opportunity, but then to face that and have the defensive attention that you had from every team we played. But, what made you more tough was that you never talked about stats with me and you never talked about anything other than wanting to win for your senior year and go as far as this team could go."
As a result, Lamers ended up as a unanimous first-team selection in the Great Northern Conference. She led the GNC in scoring, averaging 23.0 points per game in conference contests.
Finding identity
Part of Rhinelander's early- and mid-season growing pains revolved around finding a defensive identity.
The Hodags played primarily a 1-3-1 zone last season and wanted to stick with that to start the year. Rhinelander mixed in more man-to-man as the season progressed, switching up defenses based on matchups.
Rhinelander went through a stretch midway through the season where it dropped eight out of 10 games, losing six of those by 10 points or fewer. Excluding a 60-16 win over GNC back-marker Tomahawk, Rhinelander gave up 60 points per game, on average, during that stretch. The turning point came at the end of that skid, a 65-55 loss on the road at Three Lakes.
"That loss was all on me," Clark said. "That loss was trying to stick to our press and work through different things that we're struggling on and we ended up losing because of it. Since that time, we made a jump."
Best at the end
The Hodags turned it around from that point, finishing the season 6-4 over the final 10 games, including a 3-0 mark in games decided by 10 points or fewer. Rhinelander did it, primarily with a rotation of 6-7 players. They lost sophomore forward Kelsey Winter to a season-ending knee injury during the Wausau East game that kicked off the season-ending run.
During that stretch, Rhinelander avenged loss to Antigo earlier in the season and defeated Medford three times. The first two were close games - decided by seven and 11 points, respectively - but the Hodags blew out the Raiders by 25 to open the WIAA tournament.
That led into the WIAA regional semifinal game where the eighth-seeded Hodags went up against a heavily favored New London team, and hung around until the very end.
"My most proud moment, even though it was a loss, was New London," Clark said. "Going against the No. 1 seed, 20-4, whatever they were. They were a very confident, cocky, swagger team ... You guys went in there from the very first tip and believed you could win. You really embraced the atmosphere and you played great."
Statbook
Behind Lamers, junior Lily Treder was Rhinelander's second scoring threat. She averaged 12.1 points per game and shot a team-best 38.7% from 3-point range. Those numbers helped Treder earn honorable mention in the GNC.
"Lily grew a lot from her sophomore year - scoring and then post defense for us because she's one of our few forwards on defense," Clark said. "I'm hoping this helps her kind of springboard to a stronger year next year where she's a little more confident, sees herself as one of the top players in the conference and makes a nice, big jump up."
Junior Leah Jamison also had a penchant for shooting the 3-ball and was third on the team averaging 6.8 points per game. Junior Morgan Van Zile averaged 6 points and a team-best 4.1 assists a game. Winter was averaging a team-high 6.9 rebounds a contest before her injury. Junior Tori Riopel saw more minutes following Winter's injury and averaged 4.9 points and 6.2 rebounds over the final 10 games of the season.
What's next
The graduation of Lamers will leave a significant void but the Hodags return everyone else from their rotation and are expected to get a boost from an incoming freshman class that has a number of talented players.
There are parallels to the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons for the Hodags. Rhinelander went 11-14 in 2020-21 after replacing most of its varsity rotation. That team was led by a dominant senior scorer in Rebecca Lawrence, who averaged 22.6 points per game. Though Lawrence graduated, much of the squad returned and Rhinelander went 16-10 in the 2021-22 season.
The Hodags could be primed for a similar spike next year.
"We have a lot of letter winners returning with a lot of experience, and you are super kids," Clark said. "And we have young kids that have put in a lot of time that are also super kids. You have an opportunity to be a very good basketball team next year and, to be honest with you, I expect us to be a very good basketball team next year."
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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